New Morning Mercies #260

Every time you work to make a wrong you’ve done look right, you deny the gospel of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is so tempting to do. Perhaps we all do it more than we are aware of . If what we say we believe is true, it makes no sense whatsoever. Yet for many of us, it’s our first instinct when confronted with a wrong. We do it instinctively and thoughtlessly, without recognition of the danger we are to ourselves when this becomes a pattern.

When you are confronted with a wrong, caught in a wrong, or feel internally uncomfortable with a wrong that you have done and you rise to your own defense—when you refuse to see that what you have done is wrong and then turn and work to make yourself comfortable with the wrong that you have done—you aren’t just rewriting your own history, you aren’t just being self-righteous, and you aren’t just deceiving yourself. You are fighting God, in the person of the Holy Spirit, who at that moment is gracing you with insight, conviction, protection, and rescue. In grace, he is blowing through your walls of spiritual blindness and self-righteousness to help you to see yourself as you actually are and, in seeing yourself accurately, to seek the grace that is yours in Christ Jesus.

These moments of painful internal discomfort are not bad things; they are very good things. They are evidences of the tender, patient care of your Savior. He works again and again to give sight to your eyes and tenderness to your heart so that you will be progressively freed from the hold of sin on your thoughts, desires, attitudes, and actions. These moments of personal conviction are always moments of beautiful grace in action. But you and I don’t always see them as grace. We tend to hate being confronted. We tend to have a hard time admitting when we are wrong. We tend not to be thankful when we are in the position of needing to confess sin. We tend to want to avoid looking at how much we are still in need of grace. So we give ourselves to that which, in light of the gospel, makes no sense at all. We deny our wrongs and argue for our righteousness, seemingly afraid of where humble confession will lead us.

The fact is that we do not need to fear facing our sin and spiritual need. There really is nothing that we will ever need to admit to and to honestly face that hasn’t been fully addressed by the grace that is ours because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. There is nothing that we could ever do that is outside that grace. There is nothing that we could ever do that would cause God to turn his back on us. There is no reason for us to deny and defend when every sin has been carried to the cross by Jesus. Open your heart to the Spirit’s work. To defend yourself against his painful promptings never takes you anywhere good.

For further study and encouragement: 1 John 1